I love the singing. The lyrics are taken from a song in the book, obviously. There are some lines missing that leave the bit in the trailer a little nonsensical, but they always splice scenes together for trailers, and even in the movie I wouldn’t expect them to include every line from every song. Tolkien was quite verbose. Here’s some text from the paragraph just before the song, that I think show how well this movie is bringing the story to life:

The dark filled all the room, and the fire died down, and the shadows were lost, and still they played on. And suddenly first one and then another began to sing as they played, deep-throated singing of the dwarves in the deep places of their ancient homes.

Musically, I think the song is reminiscent of Pippin’s song (Edge of Night) from Return of the King. Here are the lyrics that are sung in the trailer:

Far over the misty mountain cold,

To dungeons deep and caverns old,

The pines were roaring on the height,

The winds were moaning in the night,

The fire was red, it flaming spread,

The trees like torches blazed with light.

These come from two stanzas about half-way through the song as it is included in the book, and there are two lines missing that should come after the first couplet:

We must away, ere break of day

To seek our long-forgotten gold.

Rather important syntactically, (without them it sounds like the pines were roaring to the dungeons, or something), but maybe in the full version of this scene the song will be more complete. (The flames, by the way, are from “the dragons ire, more fierce than fire,” and there is also a stanza about goblins that was skipped over between the lines of the trailer song.) I do love that it is a new tune, and that it continues throughout the second part of the trailer. New music! I mean I love the Lord of the Rings soundtracks, and they instantly increase my level of excitement when Peter Jackson includes them in his vlogs as he has been doing, but these are new films and I’m so stoked to be getting new, epic music to go with them. (The score is by Howard Shore, who also composed the music for all three Lord of the Rings films).

The tone of this trailer is undoubtedly dark. The song lyrics included talk about deep dark dungeons and burning landscapes, and several times Bilbo’s chances of survival are called into question, which I think is a little bit silly because we all know that this is a prequel and that he’s going to survive. I think they could generate excitement or market this as an action adventure full of dangerous escapades without trying to make us believe that Bilbo might die, don’t you? But they didn’t really need to work at convincing me to be excited for this movie anyway. I am duly excited. Maybe I will re-read The Hobbit during the holiday break!

**update 12/14/12** The full version of this Misty Mountain song, as sung in the movie and on the soundtrack, has these lyrics:

“Tolkien was quiet verbose.” — You might want to fix that typo, but kudos for saying this in such a succint sentence. It made me chuckle.

Agreed that you can’t create suspense that way in a prequel. Thank you for pointing that out about the lyrics; it’s odd that they would cut out those two stanzas. Don’t they summarize the plot in a nice and neat way fit for a trailer?

I think they call his survival into question so much 1st because it was done in the book, and 2nd and just as importantly, that even though LOTR came out first, when future generations watch it in right order, it will add to suspence (I read hobbit long before I read lotr, and the not knowing about the ring and that he would survive made it more intense)

The lines: “We must away, ere break of day To seek our long-forgotten gold” is included in the movie. I must say that it is one of the most impressive songs in the LOTR saga, just as good as “Gollum’s song” in Two Towers and Enya’s “May it Be”.

MMMMMMMM, people, does anybody knows – is there full song of the dwarves, which is sung in the Bilboe’s house? Don’t muddle with the song (Neil Finn) in the final titles.
I’m really trying to find it (song sang by dwarves) and will be very pleased if anyone can help.

Yes there is, it’s on the soundtrack. You can download that track individually from iTunes if you don’t want the whole soundtrack. The song is called Misty Mountains and the artists are listed as “The Dwarf Cast and Richard Armitage”